


Hold Your Breath, It Gets Better

by beethechange



Series: Sex Toys, But Make it Feelings [1]
Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Anal Beads, Anal Fingering, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Ryan has a secret drawer, Shane is a nosy fuck, and feelings because i can't help myself - Freeform, ao3 tags bein a reall pill right now, butt stuff in general
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-30
Updated: 2018-07-30
Packaged: 2019-06-18 22:27:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15496053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beethechange/pseuds/beethechange
Summary: Ryan stops short in the doorway of his bedroom, banging his shoulder against the doorframe in his haste, because he’s too late. Shane’s kneeling in front of the bottom drawer of his bedside table, peering down at the contents, hand frozen in a hover like he’d been about to reach in. His face is a blank mask.“Ah. I keep the batteries in the top drawer. Not. Not the bottom one.”“Yes,” Shane says, cocking his head to the left in puzzlement, and then he pauses for a fraction of a second too long as he considers his words. “I can see that the batteries are not in the bottom drawer.”





	Hold Your Breath, It Gets Better

**Author's Note:**

> If your name is in these tags, or you personally know the people whose names are in these tags, turn back now because your eyeballs _will_ spontaneously combust in their sockets if you proceed and I want better for you than that. 
> 
> Someone once told me in a comment on another fic that Shane doesn’t get firmly but lovingly taken apart enough in fic, so hey friend, this one’s for you. 
> 
> “I’m happy you tricked me, ‘cause I enjoyed it. You know what, that sentence right there could get you into a lot of trouble…that’s how, like, butt stuff happens, dude.” – [Ryan Bergara, Possibly Speaking from Experience and Possibly Not, We’ll Never Know, 2016](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORc1o7IC7qc)
> 
> “Did he do butt stuff? Because that’s why you would like it, ‘cause you like butt stuff.” [Quinta Brunson to Ryan Bergara, Calling It Like She Sees It, 2017](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9brZMuiPRb4)
> 
> Fic title’s from the song “A Whole New World,” from the Disney film Aladdin, and I'm obviously very penitent about that.

*

Ryan should have put a lock on the drawer. That was his mistake, the fly in the ointment, and he knows that now.

He only leaves Shane alone for like a minute to go to the bathroom, but that’s more than enough time for him to get them both in trouble.

They’re at Ryan’s place, a routine Thursday night, working on a finicky edit they didn’t quite get a chance to wrap up at work that day over pizza and beer. They’ve had dozens of working dinners exactly like this one and they’ve all been perfectly fine and normal. Not humiliating, except in the way editing an episode of Supernatural is _always_ a little humiliating for Ryan. What with the shrieking and the bug-eyed terror.  

Ryan’s just finished taking a leak and tucking himself back into his pants when Shane shouts from the living room, “Camera battery’s dead!”

“There’s spares in the drawer of the table by my bed,” Ryan yells back, zipping up his pants. He can hear Shane padding down the hallway past the bathroom, in search of a fresh battery, and he’s nearly all the way through washing his hands when he realizes the gravity of his error.

He fumbles for the doorknob with soapy hands and barrels out of the bathroom full tilt, leaving a dripping trail of water on the floor of the hallway as he goes. It might as well be his soul leaking out of his body.

“The top drawer, Shane! Not the bottom one, for the love of God not the—”

He stops short in the doorway of his bedroom, banging his shoulder against the doorframe in his haste, because he’s too late. Shane’s kneeling in front of the bottom drawer of his bedside table, peering down at the contents, hand frozen in a hover like he’d been about to reach in and then stopped short. His face is a blank mask.

“Ah,” Ryan says. “I keep the batteries in the top drawer. Not. Not the bottom one.”

“Yes,” Shane says, cocking his head to the left in puzzlement, and then he pauses for a fraction of a second too long as he considers his words. “I can see that the batteries are not in the bottom drawer.”

The batteries are not in the bottom drawer because _other things_ are in the bottom drawer. Sex things. Sex things Ryan might have an uncomfortable time explaining, if called upon to do so.

Ryan weighs his options. He could just grab his phone and his keys, book it out the door, get in his car, and drive until he hits the ocean. The idea of driving into the sea, sacrificing himself on the altar of Poseidon with an offering of butt plugs and glass dildos, holds a certain appeal.  Presumably his parents would miss him, but that’s starting to seem more and more like their problem.

“Those are not batteries,” Shane says again, and then he looks up at Ryan as if for confirmation.

“No, they’re not,” Ryan agrees. What else is there to say? He braces himself for the brutal and inevitable razzing, but Shane just slides the drawer closed with a little _click_ and opens the top drawer instead, fishing out the battery he needs.

“ _This_ is a battery,” Shane says, and he must be shell-shocked because his verbal skills really aren’t where they usually are. It’s a lot, Ryan is sure, to open your buddy’s drawer expecting to see mundane household items and instead finding an extensive collection of sex toys. He understands that this is a situation of mutual suffering, which can only be righted if they both pretend very hard that it never happened, that it isn’t _still happening_.

Shane seems to be on the same page, because he nods once, stands up to his full height, and makes a beeline for the living room. As he goes past Ryan, Ryan can’t help it—he darts aside like Shane’s giving off electric sparks, putting space between them in the doorway. He thinks for a minute that Shane will say something, call him out, but Shane just squares his shoulders and slides past him into the hall.

“Come on, man,” he says over his shoulder, “let’s finish this ep so I can be in bed before midnight.”

*

Ryan thinks they’ve reached a shaky, unspoken truce about never, _ever_ talking about it. It’ll just be a thing that Shane knows about him now, and that Ryan knows Shane knows, but that nobody has to acknowledge. But Shane has other plans.

They work for another hour or so, polishing off the pizza and the six-pack of some hipster craft beer Shane brought. The mood’s a little weird, maybe, their easy chatter stilted, and the deeper they get into the beer the more preoccupied Shane seems.

They finish the edit, and Shane’s packing up his laptop to go when he abruptly changes course. He sets his backpack down again, leans over to rest his elbows on his knees, and looks at Ryan over steepled fingers.

“Okay, so,” he says. Ryan sighs. He was _so_ close. If he just could have hustled Shane out of his apartment he’d have given it better than even odds that Shane would have considered the matter closed, but now he’s had too much time to stew in the beer and the weird vibe. His curiosity has clearly gotten the better of his circumspection. 

“ _So_ ,” Ryan says, and he tucks his legs up under himself, an elaborate little pretzel of limbs and nerves.

“The, um—” and Shane gestures vaguely in the direction of the bedroom, unable to put words to the vast array. Ryan rolls his eyes, because if he’s going to put them through this, Shane could at least have the decency to speak plainly.

“Is this a Midwest thing? Are you too repressed to say sex toys?”         

“Excuse you, Midwesterners have already forgotten more about being freaks than you’ll ever know. How do you think we stay warm during the long, frigid winters?”

“I mean, yes, Shane. I have a drawer of, of sexcessories. What’s the big fuckin’ deal?”

Shane laughs, a little exhaled snort of surprise. “ _Sexcess_ —okay.”

Ryan can feel himself starting to get defensive, which he knows is the wrong move. If he doubles down too hard, Shane will sense a sore spot and poke at it just out of instinct and sheer force of habit. It’s like facing off with a big cat; Ryan wants to dart away, but he knows from years of experience that it’s the darting that draws out the claws.

Instead he makes himself just sit still and wait for Shane to say what he wants to say. He watches while Shane picks at a fraying bit of denim on the knee of his jeans with his fingernail.

“So you use that stuff on women?”

Here goes.

“Yeah, sometimes,” Ryan says, shrugging. “But they’re mine.  So sometimes I use them on, on me. Or girls do, or.” He wants to roll his neck, crack his shoulders to pull some of the tension out of them, but he also has this stupid idea that conveying his discomfort will just make this whole conversation more uncomfortable than it already is.

Shane’s eyes go wide, just a little, but that’s the only sign that he’s surprised. He nods. “Seems…unsanitary.”

“Well you boil them in between uses, obviously. Jesus.”

Shane starts to laugh then, a real, full laugh, head thrown back, hand clapped over his mouth. Ryan’s not sure exactly what’s funny, but it’s still a relief to be back on territory he’s a little more familiar with. Shane laughing at him is easier than Shane asking him cautious, probing questions.

“Of course, you boil them. Stupid of me.”

“Well, yeah, that’s—what?”

Shane’s still laughing, almost too hard to speak. He holds up a finger until he can get the words out.

“You don’t even _cook_. I’m just imagining you in a dumb apron, casually stirring a giant cauldron of boiling dildos, like _double, double, toil and trouble_!”

“Oh honey!” Ryan pretends to call down the hall, laughing himself, “the anal beads are almost ready, grab a plate!”

Shane’s laughter dies and he swallows conspicuously, which tells Ryan maybe he hadn’t noticed the beads in the moment, but oh well. In for a penny, in for a pound.

“Where do you even find chicks who are into that stuff?” Shane asks, and Ryan honestly can’t tell if he’s fishing with purpose or just making conversation. “Like, do you just go on Tindr and tell them you want…”

“When you’re with someone a few times it does tend to come up naturally,” Ryan says. “Or.”

“Or? You’re dropping a lot of ‘ors’ all of a sudden.”

Ryan takes a minute to consider before he finishes his thought. He hadn’t been planning on some big revelation, but maybe now’s the exact right time, when he’s already hit peak on his life’s roller coaster of awkwardness and there’s nowhere to go but down. Maybe this is the best opportunity he’ll ever get.

“Or it’s pretty easy on Grindr.”

Shane sits back a little at that, hands on his thighs like he’s bracing to stand. He looks Ryan full on, all nose and surprised eyebrows, and Ryan holds his gaze because it’s sort of like a trust fall.

“Oh. I’m, yeah, I’m sure it. That makes—sense.”

Ryan can see Shane’s wheels spinning. He’s trying to find the right thing to say, trying to hit the right balance between supportive and nonplussed, trying to decide if it’s politer to be visibly surprised or not at all surprised. This is why this isn’t something Ryan talks about; not because he’s worried about how people will react, but because he doesn’t like doing this dance. Doesn’t like watching people, _his_ people, fall all over themselves to show how little it matters, as if he doesn’t know that already.

“Let’s not do the thing,” Ryan says, heading it off at the pass.

“The thing?”

“The _thing_.” It’s been an unbelievably long day, and he still has to go to work tomorrow knowing a coworker has seen the inside of his sex drawer, which is a lot for a summer Friday. “The thing where, like, I confess all my secrets, and then you clap me on the shoulder and tell me _it’s cool, bro_ , and then you spend the next two weeks pointing out hot dudes to me to prove how comfortably heterosexual you are.”

“I can’t believe you think I would do that,” Shane says, leaning forward with urgency. “As if I would ever call you _bro_.”

Ryan can’t help it: he wheezes.

Shane stands up from the couch and loops his laptop bag around his shoulder. With each hand he grabs three empty beer bottles, gripping them between long spider fingers.

“Well, we’ve learned a lot of things here tonight and I think it’s been a very productive evening,” he says, dumping them in the recycling bin, swiping open his phone to call for a Lyft. “For example: Quinta was right this whole time about you and butt stuff, that clever witch, and I’m going to consider every weird thing you say about aliens from now on _deeply_ suspicious.”

“Shut up, Shane,” Ryan says. It’s a relief, but it shouldn’t be a surprise. Shane is a quick person in general; quick-thinking, quick-witted, quick to find the right response in any given situation. It isn’t surprising that he’s internalized this new thing quickly as well, made it a part of his life much more easily than Ryan had given it up. 

“And also that you have to boil sex toys. Who knew!”

“You’re thirty-two years old and you’re _disgusting_ if that’s new information to you,” Ryan says. “Get out of my apartment.”

“The man who owns least four butt plugs, one of them hot pink and roughly the size of a barge, does not get to call _me_ disgusting,” Shane says with a glimmer of mischief, ducking out the door.

Ryan whips the stray cap of a beer bottle at his retreating back with all his might, but Shane’s already gone.

*

Ryan expects it to be horrible, seeing Shane’s face in the clear light of day, knowing he could be about to make a joke about butt stuff at any moment. But to his credit, Shane doesn’t say a word until he’s invited to do so.

Ryan sits down at his desk the next day with a loud thump, throwing all his weight on the chair, and Shane’s left eyebrow quirks. Ryan shifts a little, testing a theory, and the corner of Shane’s mouth twitches. Ryan can see the effort he’s expending to not make the joke; he’s practically sweating with it.

“Fine,” Ryan says. “Fine. You get _one_.”  

Shane runs his hand through his hair, making it stand up on end.

“Ryan, you don’t know what you’re asking. That’s like Sophie’s Choice. You don’t understand how many jokes and puns occurred to me while I was trying to fall asleep last night, and I love each and every one of them like my children.”

“One.”

“I honestly don’t know how you can expect me to not make _cracks_ about this.”

Ryan groans.

“That was so weak, man. I can’t believe you wasted your one on _cracks_.  You need to find something else to fall asleep thinking about.”

“I can’t believe you expect me to just _sit on_ this information.”

“I said one!” Ryan squawks, watching Shane’s Cheshire Cat grin grow when the joke lands. He lowers his voice to a whisper when Chantal glances over at them from across the bay of desks. “Drop it, dude, at least at work.  Or I’ll retaliate by telling you stories you don’t want to hear.  Detailed, graphic stories.”

“Hmm,” Shane says, biting into the corner of a cold Strawberry Pop-Tart. “Okay, Ry. No need to get butthurt about it.”

Ryan brings his head down to rest on his desk. “If I strangled you right now with my bare hands, no jury on earth would convict me.”

*

Shane does drop it. He drops it for a full week and a half. He doesn’t joke, and he doesn’t drop hints, and he doesn’t text Ryan any inappropriate emojis.

But every once in a while Ryan, working at his desk with his headphones on, will get the strange feeling that he’s being watched. Just a little prickle at the back of his neck that makes him slide his eyes over, and then Shane will slide his eyes back to his computer screen. He doesn’t know what it means, but it’s a new development.

One day Shane finds him in one of the break rooms, sitting with a cup of coffee and going over printed-out PowerPoint slides the old-fashioned way with a red pen. He eases into the chair next to Ryan, long legs folding in gracelessly under a too-short table.

“So,” he begins, looking pained. Then he shakes his head, starts over. “Anal beads. What is their deal, anyway?”

It’s so very much not what Ryan was expecting from break-room small talk that he does an actual double-take like he’s in an old silent comedy slapstick. 

“I— _what_?”

Shane winces, as if he knows how terrible this is but he can’t help himself.

“I’m just wondering what the, what the deal is. With them. The point. The _raison d'être_.”

“Is this for a video? Am I being filmed right now?”

“Jesus, Ryan, no,” Shane says, alarmed. “I’m just. I’m sorry, this is…wow, really not appropriate.”

“I can’t figure out why else you would be approaching me at our workplace, _where we work_ , to ask me about the raisin whatever of anal beads.”

Shane doesn’t have great posture under the best of circumstances, but now he seems to be slowly sinking down into his chair, willing himself to slip through the floor and be somewhere else.

Just then, Curly pokes his head around the corner as if summoned, his wild hair emerging around the doorframe.

“I know I just heard someone in here say ‘anal beads,’ ¡ _mis chicos guapos_!” he says, waving his empty coffee mug around in an accusatory fashion like he’s going to separate them and interrogate them both in turn until they confess. “Unless I am very mistaken about the nature of ghosts, that sounds like a N-S-F-W conversation.  But very S-F-C, Safe for Curly.”

“I think you must’ve misheard,” Ryan says, covering. “We were talking about—” and then he draws a blank. His traitor brain has betrayed him and he can’t pull anything out that would make even a little sense. Thinking on his feet was never his strong suit.

“Bees,” Shane says, and Curly and Ryan both stare at him. “A swarm of bees. There’s a, there’s a hive out by the studio door. I got dive-bombed this morning.”

“Hmm,” Curly says, fluffing Shane’s hair as he heads to the coffee machine. “ _No te creo_ , babe, but I guess it’s none of my beeswax.”

He winks at Ryan, and Ryan knows they’ve gotten away with nothing.

*

Ryan would love to say he forgets all about it, but _forgets_ isn’t the right word. He just pushes it to the very back of his mind. Work gets busy—the new True Crime season films in just a couple of weeks and he’s still got a ton to do—and it’s his parents’ 30 th wedding anniversary next week, so he doesn’t have time to worry about what Shane might or might not be contemplating.   

It comes rushing back to the foreground with sudden, staggering clarity on Friday night, when a bunch of them go out for drinks after work. Drinks turns into dinner and drinks, which turns into the tiki bar, which turns into laughing uproariously into Shane’s shoulder while clutching a mai tai with a paper umbrella in it. Shane’s got a stemless purple flower tucked in his hair, and Ryan has no idea where he even found it or how it’s staying put.

For some stupid reason Ryan can’t stop staring at Shane’s hands. They’re good hands, strong and big, with long fingers and clean, filed nails. Ryan doesn’t know why he’s never noticed them before, or why he can’t stop noticing them now.

Shane’s got one hand wrapped around his drink, and the other’s tapping out a little rhythm on the table. Ryan realizes that he doesn’t know where the rest of their friends went, although they must be around here somewhere. Time’s started to go a little fizzy, coming in and out of focus so it feels like it’s passing very slowly and then rushing ahead to catch up.

“The deal is that they feel good, idiot,” Ryan says, picking up the conversation as if they just began it moments rather than days ago. He’s not even sure what makes him say it. He must be a lot drunker than he thought. “And they look great too.”

“What?”

“The beads,” Ryan says, gesturing at nothing with the hand holding his drink. A little of it splashes on the table. Shane reaches out to trace a finger through it, drawing a little pattern on the wet wood.

“Oh jeez. Ryan, we don’t need to…”

“No, you asked, though. The deal is—visually it’s really, like, a lot.”

“That I, um, know,” Shane says, and he actually _blushes_. Ryan’s not sure he’s ever seen Shane blush, not like this. It’s sort of riveting, the way the pink creeps up his neck to his face. The way his hand flexes around the sweating glass of frozen whatever that he’s drinking. Ryan wants to see how far he can take that blush.

“So you wanna know how they _feel_ , then?” Ryan asks, leaning in conspiratorially. Shane just shrugs, but he’s paying awfully close attention for someone who isn’t interested in what Ryan has to say.

“It’s really good. Deep, and full, and…good. Like tension and release, over and over. The tapered ones are fun because you can work your way up, bit by bit, and then you get to feel all accomplished when you take the biggest one.”

Shane swallows, and then he brings his glass up to his mouth to sip it. Ryan casts around for somewhere else to look, anywhere else. He can’t figure out when this conversation made the seamless transition from awkward to appealing, although the $60 worth of alcohol probably had something to do with it

“Doesn’t it feel uncomfortable? Doesn’t it hurt?”

“Not if you do it right. The stretch is part of it. They’re not really for prostate stimulation, but still—fucking great, man.”

Shane’s eyes dart around a little at that, like he can’t believe Ryan just uttered the words “prostate stimulation” in a public place. Ryan realizes both that he’s a little turned on, and that he’s having an enormous amount of fun watching Shane squirm. This is a rare treat for him; usually it’s the other way around, and Shane’s the smug unflappable one.

And then, a third realization—Shane’s getting off on this too. Maybe more than Ryan, even. He’s shifting in his chair, pink all over, pupils blown wide in unfocused brown eyes. 

“Oh my God, you’re _into_ this,” Ryan says pretty much the instant it occurs to him, because RIP his filter, and because he desperately wants to know what Shane will do when he’s called out. The answer, apparently, is duck his head enough so Ryan can see that the flush has spread to the back of his neck too, disappearing under the collar of his shirt.

“You don’t have to say it,” Shane mutters, polishing off the last of his drink.

“Yes, yes I do!” Ryan says, poking Shane in the chest with an emphatic finger. He feels strangely triumphant, like he’s won an argument he didn’t even know they were having. “This whole time you’ve been making fun of me but secretly stroking yourself raw about it.”

“Could you _not_ —”

“Look, man, nobody brings up fucking _anal beads_ at work unless they really, really wanna talk about ‘em. Why don’t you just try it, if you’re so hung up about it?”

Shane looks back up at that, aghast, as if this singular question has been haunting him for weeks. He spreads his hands wide.

“With who, Ryan?”

“You have two hands, don’t you?” He knows full well Shane has two completely capable hands, because he’s been staring at them all night and he’s sure they could manage all sorts of things. “Or, it’s 2018, man. Just, just fuckin’ go on Tindr and upload a couple pics of your scrawny ass and your weirdly compelling face. Some adventurous chick with a Gumby fetish will be stuffing you full while you beg for mercy within seventy-two hours.”

Shane makes a tiny distressed noise.

“I couldn’t with a _stranger_. I’d have to trust her, and date her for ages, and work my way up to asking, and by that time global warming or nuclear winter will probably have killed half the planet and it’ll be too late.”

“That escalated very quickly to apocalypse, but okay,” Ryan says.  “I just think you might be overthinking the complex simplicity of butt stuff. There are any number of people in your life who would probably be delighted to get all up in that.”

He’s not thinking of himself specifically when he says it—honestly, he isn’t.

“Are there?” Shane asks. He gives Ryan a searching look. His hands are tangled together on the table now, fingers interwoven. He takes a deep breath and shakes his head like he’s trying to unclutter it, dislodging the flower in the process. Ryan watches it flutter to the table. “Do you—would you…”

Ryan’s mid-sip when Shane asks, or rather sort of starts to ask and peters out pathetically, and it takes him a little time to realize that this already-surreal conversation has taken a fresh twist. He does a literal spit take, and then he wonders when spending time with Shane began to turn into physical comedy.

“Dude.”

“Well, I mean. Is that a yes?”

“No, it’s not a yes!” Shane’s face actually, visibly _falls_. It occurs to Ryan that maybe this is less spontaneous than it seems. That perhaps Shane has been angling for this the whole time, working himself up to ask over days and weeks, and the off-the-cuff nature of it is just a smokescreen. That maybe he _means_ it.

“But it’s not a no,” he amends, and Shane exhales.

“So then…?”

“Ask me again,” Ryan says. “Ask me again when we’re sober. It won’t be—like, so we’re clear, it’ll be _sex_. I’m not going to wear rubber gloves and tell you to cough. It won’t be a favor, it’ll be fucking.”

“I know it is,” Shane says, pushing hair off his sweaty forehead. “Ryan—I know that.”

“And if you don’t ask, that’s cool too, I won’t ever mention it. But I don’t want to hear another joke about the contents of my drawer ever again.”

“That’s more than fair,” Shane agrees. He catches the eye of the waiter and points at his empty glass.

_*_

_Sunday, July 15 [41 hours later]_

_3:47 pm_

**Shane** : So.

 **Shane** : I’m painfully sober right now.

 **Shane** : I’m asking again.

 

_4:58 pm_

**Shane** : Ryan?

 **Shane** : I know you have a life and stuff but this is the kind of text a person really hopes for a quick turnaround on.

 **Ryan** : k

 **Shane** : All you can say is “k”???

 **Ryan** : brb boiling everything

 **Ryan** : btw i just sent u some required reading

_5:09 pm_

**Shane** : Oh my God. I know how to clean my own ass.

 **Ryan** : look u never know with people

 **Ryan** : i’ve been burned before

 **Shane** : Yikes.

 

_9:20 pm_

**Shane** : Thanks that was all very informative and now I’m freaking out.

 **Ryan** : don’t freak out, i gotchu big guy

 

_1:05 am_

**Ryan** : a whole new wooooooooooorld

 **Ryan** : a dazzling place u never knew

 **Shane** : GO TO SLEEP RYAN

 **Ryan** : tell me princess when did u last let ur heart decide

 **Shane** : All I’m telling is this story, to HR, tomorrow.

 

*

They spend the next week at work very carefully not talking about it. No real arrangements have been made, but Ryan wants to let Shane lead this part, let him know when he’s ready. Ryan still puts the odds at 70-30 that this is all a hypothetical thing for him anyway, something that might be more exciting to think about than to actually put into action, so he tries not to let himself get too invested in the idea.

Still, it’s new for him, thinking about Shane this way. It’s not that he never found Shane attractive before; he had, in the abstract, noticed good hair days, noticed the way that Shane’s t-shirts fit, noticed how his strange facial features combined into an attractive brew when he laughed or smiled (which was often). He just never really let himself consider it seriously, because Shane was a coworker, and straight, and simply not an option.

Now, though, he thinks about it a lot. Enough that he’s having trouble getting work done. Enough that he works from home a couple of days that week—only that doesn’t help either, because then he can just feel the drawer calling to him. _Stop writing that script, Ryan_ , it says. _Come hang out with us_. _Come think about your respected colleague and friend and jerk off about it._

He spends a lot of time considering the logistics of Shane’s limbs, now, in a way he hadn’t before.

He goes back into work on Friday, resigned to the fact that this will just be lost week, a week where nothing productive gets done and deadlines whoosh past unmet.

Shane’s waiting for him when he gets there; he must’ve gotten in early just to lurk near their desks and then _pounce_ , because the minute Ryan sits down at his desk he’s there, looming.

“Hey man,” he says. “Busy tonight? I was thinking I might come over.”

“Come over. Tonight.” It’s still kind of early in the morning, okay, and Ryan’s had a week, and he hasn’t even had any coffee yet.

“Yeah, I thought we could finish that show,” Shane says. He looks around covertly, but there aren’t many people in yet. “You know. That _show_ we were watching.”

Now Ryan’s all but certain he’s being propositioned for sex. He can tell because Shane has raised his eyebrows into meaningful arches, and also because he put air-quotes around the word “show.” Like, why even bother using a code word if you’re going to make it obvious that it’s a code word?

“Right, the show,” Ryan repeats. “Sounds good. Eight o’clock? I’ve got some stuff to do first.” _I’ve got to go home and shower and panic and wash my sheets and panic and find something in the fridge that isn’t expired and figure out my life and panic._

“Eight o’clock would be perfect.” Shane raps his knuckles on Ryan’s desk twice, like that settles it, and then he wanders off.

Ryan’s just thinking he should go get coffee when Shane returns, setting a steaming mug of coffee in front of him. He wraps his hand around Ryan’s shoulder and squeezes just once, so quickly no one else will have noticed, and then he goes back to his own desk to work.

And just like that Ryan’s ready for tonight.

*

Shane arrives promptly at eight, a backpack over his shoulder. Ryan’s charmed by the nervous, excited energy he’s throwing off, like it’s the first day of school or something. He’s freshly showered, hair still damp at the collar, and he smells like clean dude and a faint whiff of sandalwood and mint.

“I brought stuff to stay over,” Shane says, “but I don’t have to stay if you don’t want.”

“Of course you can _stay_.” Ryan throws the door open, motioning him in with a nod. “I’m not gonna, you know.”

“Hit it and quit it?” Shane asks, dumping his bag on the couch. He just stands there, rubbing his hands on his jeans, looking like he doesn’t know what to do with himself now that he’s here. Ryan’s not really sure what to do either. Usually when he brings someone back to his place they’ve been on a date first, spent the evening flirting and working themselves up so that it proceeds naturally. He’s not sure what he and Shane have been doing could be called flirting—or else they’ve been flirting for going on three years now.

“Do you wanna watch something for real?” Ryan motions to the couch. “We could put on an ep of something, just to like. Chill out for a bit.”

Shane’s nodding before Ryan even finishes his sentence, and he plunks himself down on the couch. Ryan sits down next to him, close—closer than he would normally, because getting Shane comfortable is the point of all of this—and scrolls through Netflix.

He ends up putting on an episode of _The Tudors_ , rationalizing that it’s kind of sexy and also so terrible that they won’t feel bad not paying attention to the plot. Shane snorts next to him.

“If you’re trying to loosen me up with boobs, Bergara, that’s a weird tactic. Considering you won’t be able to follow through.” 

“I was trying to distract you with bad history, actually.”

“…That might work,” Shane admits. 

The thing about this show is that somebody’s getting porked about every ten minutes like clockwork, so Ryan feels like he made the right choice. Shane keeps up a steady stream of horrified commentary about various inaccuracies and anachronisms, and Ryan keeps up a steady pressure of his leg against Shane’s.

Henry VIII nails some nubile waif with suspiciously well-shaved legs up against a tree, and Ryan sets his hand very deliberately on Shane’s knee. Shane jumps in surprise, but then he loosens by degrees, relaxing back against the couch as Ryan rubs a little circle into Shane’s knee with his thumb.

“Love that hot knee-touching action,” Shane says. “Feeling up his kneecap really makes a guy feel special.”

“Shut up, you. I’m not going to go straight for the ass like some kind of, some kind of—”

“Ass-bat?”

“Oh my God.” They’re both laughing now, Ryan pulling back his hand to slap his own thigh, Shane’s head thrown back against the couch. This is when he’s at his most attractive, Ryan thinks; mid-laugh, eyes nearly closed, the little wrinkles and laugh lines crinkling. Ryan’s filled with the sudden desire to kiss him, and so that’s what he does.

Shane shifts in surprise under him, still laughing a muffled laugh into Ryan’s mouth as Ryan kisses him. It’s all very careful, very appraising, to start—just a gentle press of lips on smiling lips—and then Ryan swings his leg around so he’s kneeling astride Shane. Shane’s hands fly up for a minute, confused and out-of-place, and then they find a home on Ryan’s hips where his t-shirt’s riding up.

Ryan presses into the kiss to transform it into something a little _more_ , running a hand through Shane’s hair (softer than he expected, nearly devoid of product). He lets his mouth slide open and Shane does the same, responding just right to Ryan’s signals.

After a minute, Ryan pulls back. Shane looks a little stunned. He licks his lips and stares at Ryan’s mouth, and Ryan wonders if he’s even kissed a guy before, if he’s cataloguing differences and similarities. It feels rude to ask.

“This is what I meant,” Ryan says, shifting on top of Shane just a little, letting Shane feel that he’s getting hard without it being too much to handle if he’s changed his mind. “When I said it would be sex. I’ve got to feel okay about it too. I can’t…if you’re not into this part of it, the rest of it’s not going to work for me.”

“I wouldn’t have asked if I wasn’t into it,” Shane says. “I appreciate you trying to warm me up here, but it’s really not necessary. I’m already _so_ warm. Right outta the oven, baby!”

He tightens his fingers on Ryan’s hips and pulls Ryan _down_ , into his lap, and Ryan can tell immediately that Shane’s hard too. It’s such a relief that he leans in again with renewed fervor to leave a sloppy bite-kiss under Shane’s stubbly jaw, and then to mouth his way down Shane’s neck to the spot where his collarbone is poking out of his shirt.

Shane rumbles under him, pulling Ryan down and against his hardness again.

“Okay,” he says. “Can we—bedroom? I can’t do this while Henry VIII is making crazy-eyes at me.”

Ryan reluctantly draws himself up. For someone who hadn’t thought about Shane too much in this context until very recently, he’s finding that he could do this all night. He’s surprised by how much he wants it, now that he has it. It’s like being too lazy to make dinner, forcing yourself to do it, and then realizing once the first bite’s in your mouth that you’re actually _starving_.

“Yes. By all means, let’s bedroom.”

*

Watching Shane Madej take his clothes off is, well. It’s something.

Ryan sits back on the bed, against the headboard, as Shane whips his shirt off and immediately starts on the button and zip of his jeans. He thought he was eager, but he’s got nothing on Shane, who nearly falls out of his own pants in his haste to remove them. Negotiating clothing when you have that much limb must be a constant trial.

Then he comes for Ryan, yanking him down from a seated position by his ankles until he’s lying flat on the bed, attacking the fly of his pants too. All Ryan can do is cackle helplessly as Shane grabs for the legs of his jeans and pulls.

“Why are these so fucking tight?” Shane grouses.

“That’s how the kids wear them these days, old man,” Ryan says, lifting his hips helpfully so Shane can wiggle the jeans down his hips and past his thighs and finally off. He hadn’t counted on this enthusiasm, and he hadn’t counted on the fact that Shane mostly-naked would be dizzyingly attractive to him on top of being a hilarious flurry of pale moving parts.

He removes his own shirt before Shane can fly at him again to do it, because he likes this shirt and he’s a little worried Shane will rip it with his newfound zest for life. He drags it over his head, balling it up to toss it into the laundry basket. He misses.

When he looks back at Shane, Shane’s staring at him.

“What the fuck, you’re _stacked_ ,” he says, like it’s a personal affront.

“You’ve seen me shirtless so many times,” Ryan points out. He clenches a little for emphasis, making the muscles of his abs and arms flex, and Shane rolls his eyes.

“It’s different when I can do something about it. I have like a foot on you—”

“Rude!”

“—and I bet you could throw me around here like it’s nothing.”

It’s an offhand remark, but Ryan absolutely files that one away in case it comes up later. It makes sense that such a big dude might be attracted to the novelty of being tossed around a little.

“Okay, well, come over here and maybe we’ll find out.” Ryan rolls over, making space on the bed, and he pats it, feeling a little self-conscious. That fades away quickly, though, because Shane is sliding into the bed beside him, reaching out to touch Ryan’s abs and then stroke a tentative hand up his pecs to his arms.

Ryan’s got something of a plan for this part, though, and he doesn’t want to be distracted from it. He sits up, pushing Shane onto his back, and then he’s straddling one of Shane’s legs and hooking fingers into the waistband of his boxers.

“If at any point you don’t like something, you have to tell me,” Ryan says. “It can be—hard to tell, sometimes, with this stuff. The body gets, gets confused. So you have to talk to me.”

“I promise,” Shane says, and then he breathes out very slowly as Ryan pulls his boxers down and off and situates himself at a kneel between Shane’s legs.

Ryan leans over to grab the lube from his nightstand, and he can feel Shane tense up immediately.

“Again: human man, not an ass-bat,” Ryan says. “I’m not gonna go in with guns blazing, so try to fuckin’ relax.”

He gets his hand slick with a bit of lube and grips Shane’s dick, giving him a slow stroke. He’d sort of counted on having to work harder to get Shane turned on enough to make this fun for him, but now that he doesn’t have to do that he can just let himself enjoy. It’s still surreal, to look down and see the guy he sees at the desk next door every day sprawled out naked on his bed.

“Can I just say,” Ryan says conversationally, letting his hand stoke at a slow, even pace, “that this is more dick than any one person really needs. Too much leg, _entirely_ too much dick.”

“I don’t get a lot of complaints,” Shane says, looking up at him through heavy-lidded eyes. “And the bulge your Fruit of the Looms are rocking right now suggests you don’t really mean those hurtful words at all.”

“Why don’t you unclench a little and tell me what you’ve done before,” Ryan punctuates this with a twist of his wrist, “so I don’t shock your delicate sensibilities by accident.”

“Done?” Shane’s looking a little woozy now, a little unfocused, and Ryan’s proud to have had that effect on him so quickly. It’s a thrill to be with someone so responsive, and frankly it’s been a while.

“Done to you,” Ryan qualifies. “Fingers?”

“Oh, I—yeah.”

“Yours or hers?”

“Muh—mine.”

That was the answer Ryan was hoping for, and he rewards Shane with extra attention to the head of his cock, trailing fingers softly up the prominent vein on the underside to slick around the tip.

“Tongues?”

“Once.”

“Did you like it?”

“God, yes,” Shane says, and it comes out as a half-sigh when Ryan starts to stroke a little faster.

“Toys?”

“N—um, no, never.”

Ryan leans down and licks a tiny drop of pre-come from the tip, and Shane jerks his hips in an uncontrolled spasm.

“Ryan!” It’s so close to an admonishment that Ryan has to smile as he lets his tongue rove, just enough to tease and not enough to provide satisfying contact.

“Oh my God,” Shane says, feigning the dawning of a realization. “Are you—am I in bed with a sexual sadist right now? Is that what this is?”

“Shut _up_ , Shane,” Ryan says, drawing back, his voice fond. Shane’s arm is lying prone on the bed, palm up, and Ryan presses the bottle of lube into his hand and gives him a light smack on the thigh. “Alright, let’s see what you can do with those perfect fingers, big guy.”

“I—what?”

“Fingers, ass, let’s go, buddy. You didn’t think I was just going to let you lie here while I did all the work, did you?”

Shane flushes beautifully when he understands, and Ryan gets to enjoy the way that pink flush he got a sneak peek of at the tiki bar spreads down his chest and arms to meet the reddened hardness of his cock. This, right here, is what Ryan’s going to see every time he closes his eyes for the indefinite future.

He leans in and takes Shane’s finger in his mouth, all the way down to the knuckle, licking at the thin webbing of skin between fingers and sucking on his fingertip on the way up. Just in case there’s any lingering confusion.

Ryan rocks back on his heels and watches as Shane flips the top of the lube open with a shaking hand. He hadn’t realized being asked to do this would affect Shane so much, but this is as nervous as Ryan’s seen him all night.

Ryan’s all set to help him figure out a comfortable position or hold his ridiculous long legs up if he needs the help, but he doesn’t have to. Shane pulls his knees up and to the left, twisting slightly onto his side and opening himself up so he can reach behind himself easily with his right hand. He strokes over his hole a couple of times with a cautious pointer finger, just a tease of a touch, and then he starts to slowly push in.

His fingers really were made for this, perfectly long and slim and strong. Ryan watches in awe-tinged surprise as Shane’s eyes flutter shut and his face just— _relaxes_ —as he works his finger into himself in a smooth slide, nerves falling away.

“How often have you done this?” Ryan’s made curious by Shane’s obvious familiarity with himself, the comfortable way in which he bears down on his own finger, twitching his hips down and back to meet it with every instroke. He’s not quite the novice Ryan was led to believe he was.

“Never, before a couple of weeks ago,” Shane says, with a little breathy laugh, “and kind of a lot, since then.”

“I’m flattered that my drawer’s had such an impact on your life,” Ryan says. “You’ve really been goin’ through some stuff, huh?”

He wants to take a minute or two for himself to just sit back and watch the show, so he does: he gets a good view and he lets Shane watch him in return as he rubs himself through his boxer-briefs. It quickly becomes unbearable to look and not touch, though, and Ryan fumbles for the lube where it lies on the bed. He strokes Shane a couple more times for good measure, not that his erection needs the help, and then he braces himself with a firm hand on Shane’s stomach and allows his other to slide down the cleft of Shane’s ass.

“Okay?”

‘Fuck yes” Shane wipes sweat from his forehead with his free hand, and then Ryan is easing the pad of his middle finger into him, right alongside Shane’s own, dragging against it all the way until he’s fully sheathed. Shane groans, then, so much deeper than the usual timbre of his voice, as they both pull out and back in together.

They’ve always worked well together, played off each other beat-for-beat. It’s reassuring to see that this is no exception: a well-oiled machine of moving parts and trust, pushing through the awkwardness to find something worth having.

“ _Nice_ ,” Ryan says, admiring the way that Shane is stretched around them both. He strokes his pinky across Shane’s knuckles and then links it briefly with Shane’s pinky, meant to be a reassurance, but he can feel Shane clench around them both when he laughs.

“This is very complicated, as secret best friend handshakes go,” he says, and then Ryan pulls his hand back to finger-fuck him properly and Shane doesn’t say anything at all.

*

Ryan doesn’t want to toot his own horn, but he thinks this is going pretty well.

He’s trying his level best to ignore his own hard-on while he takes care of Shane, but it’s taking all the willpower he has, because Shane’s a fucked-out, blissed-out, leaking mess on the bed and it’s _outstanding_. More often than not he’s the one getting this treatment, and it’s more exciting to turn the tables than he thought it would be—first with his fingers, and then with a small glass dildo that left Shane gasping and writhing against the cold hardness.

He’s sure if he touched Shane right now he’d be coming inside twenty seconds, but Shane asked for something specific here tonight and Ryan’s not going to send him away without it.

Ryan eases his way up Shane’s body, leaving little marks as he goes, sucking red into the skin above his hipbone and under his armpit and in the space between his collarbones. He’ll have to wear crew-necks for a few days, or everyone will see it and hassle him.

Maybe Ryan will even join in the hassling, pretend he wasn’t the person who put it there. He likes the thought of that so much that he sucks another red-purple mark, bigger, right on Shane’s neck where he won’t be able to hide it.

“You’re a possessive little monster, aren’t you?” Shane says, barely more than a mumble, raking a hand through Ryan’s hair as he pulls himself up to eye-level. “Surprising exactly _no one_.”

“Yeah, well, you’re a repressed, horny disaster,” Ryan shoots back, and he runs his fingertips through the mess of wetness on Shane’s belly where he’s been steadily leaking for the last half an hour to prove the point. “You’re all wet, dude. You didn’t even know your body could do this, did you?”

Shane shudders as the edge of Ryan’s finger just grazes the tip of his cock.

“Are you ready to find out, then?”

“Find out what?”

“The _deal_ with anal beads,” Ryan says, and he hopes Shane can feel the smile he directs into his neck.

“You’re going to kill me.” Shane pulls himself up onto his elbows to regard Ryan solemnly. “I’m too old for this business, my heart’s going to give out.”

“Too old my ass,” Ryan says. “If you think this isn’t an average Tuesday before noon for Sir Ian McKellen you’re dreaming. Dig through the drawer and bring me the ones you want, I know you’ve been dying to get another look in there.”

He doesn’t usually do a lot of ordering people around in the bedroom, or get ordered around, but there’s something about the absurd length of Shane on his bed that makes him want to get bossy. It’s also a practical request; he’s got a couple of sets and he doesn’t want to decide for Shane what he can take.

Shane hauls himself up onto his side, unsteady, and starts to rifle through the drawer. 

“I can’t believe the sheer variety of filth you have in here,” he says, digging through it. “I don’t even know what half of this shit is.”

“I can show you if you want,” Ryan says with a leer Shane doesn’t see.

Shane comes back up with a set of black silicone beads, five of them, starting at about a quarter inch in diameter and going up to an inch and change on the final, widest bead, with a loop at the end. It’s a good choice; Shane’s been prepped enough to manage all but the last couple of beads pretty easily, so he’ll get stretch but shouldn’t have any real discomfort.

“Let’s try these bad boys,” Shane says, and he thwaps Ryan on the chest with them, smirking when the silicone bounces off his pec.

“I liked you a lot better ten minutes ago when you were fuckin’ reaming yourself on my fingers instead of assaulting me with my own property,” Ryan says.

“Well, you know what to do, then!”

Before Shane can settle himself back down on his back on the bed, Ryan’s up on his knees and grabbing Shane at the hips, flipping him around and hauling him around bodily onto his hands and knees. Shane’s a lot of person and Ryan’s muscles strain a little to manage it, but manage it he does. His reward is the way all of Shane’s breath leaves his body at once and he arches his back like he’s hoping to grind down into the bed, only the bed isn’t there.

“Thought you’d like that.”

Shane just shakes his head.

“You’re nothing like I thought you’d be before I found your hoard,” he says, twisting his neck around to get a look at Ryan over his shoulder. “You’re so…sure of yourself.  Where’s this fearlessness the rest of the time?”

“It’s how I unwind,” Ryan says, with all the verve of someone fully and unknowingly breezing right past a meaningful revelation. “And you know me, I’m an uptight guy, I need a lot of unwinding.”

“Not so uptight now, surely.” The bastard. Ryan aims a hearty smack at his ass, hard enough to make it a little red, and appreciates the shiver that passes through Shane’s shoulders and back after impact.

He grabs for the beads, then, and slicks them up well.

“You’re a goddamn nightmare,” he tells Shane, feeling him relax a fraction at what they both know to be a term of endearment, and then slips the first two beads into him easily.

Ryan’s working the fourth bead in, stroking a hand along Shane’s sweaty back where his spine ends to discourage him from tensing up, when he realizes what Shane said.

“Wait,” he says, halting his progress so the bead’s frozen at its widest point, stretching Shane open around it. “Does that mean you thought about me before a couple of weeks ago? About this?”

Shane groans, a hoarse, broken noise that comes all the way from his diaphragm. Ryan knows that noise; he’s made it before.

“Is this the—oh fuck—the time, Ryan?” He pants. “Kind of in the middle of a thing here.”

“Did I forget to mention the real point of anal beads?” Ryan asks, reaching out a finger to trace Shane’s rim where it’s stretched around the bead, where he knows the nerve endings are all alight. “Because it’s actually _torment_.”

The bead pops in, and Shane wiggles as Ryan starts in on the final one, putting a bracing hand on his lower back to keep him still.

“I did think about you,” Shane says, a low, barely-audible confession into his own elbows, punctuated by sharp intake of breath. “Not about this specifically, until then, but—oh, whoa, _fuuuuck_.”

Shane trails off into a high-pitched keening noise as the final bead pops in and he closes tight around the silicone string. Ryan tests the loop at the end, just a gentle tug, and Shane follows the motion like he’s on a leash.

“Are they all in?” he asks, and he sounds dazed. Ryan grabs Shane’s hand in answer, pressing it behind him to wrap around the loop; he loses his balance and topples forward onto his face and other arm on the pillow, pushing his ass up into the air.

“Sure are. How do you feel? You look like you’re at the end of your rope, man,” Ryan says, letting himself have a little retaliatory joke.

Shane pulls experimentally on the loop, shifting his weight from knee to knee, and the fact that he doesn’t laugh or talk back is itself an answer. Ryan knows well what he’s feeling now, the way the beads must be shifting and rolling inside as Shane’s body adjusts. The way they push against sensitive places like waves on the ocean.

“Full. Pressure. That’s—wow, that’s crazy.”

“Good crazy?” Ryan doesn’t wait for Shane to answer; he reaches around Shane’s waist with a slick hand to run his fingers through the damp trail of hair under his naval and find his dick. It twitches up into Ryan’s palm when he telegraphs his intent to touch, still hard after all this.

Shane tries to say something, but it just comes out like “ _Ashflhahhgh_.”

“Sure,” Ryan agrees. He strokes with his left hand, a little awkwardly, and makes it rain lube with his right. Then he starts to tug at the loop with a little more strength, starting to work Shane open again from the other direction: pulling out rather than pushing in.

“Whaaaat,” Shane says as the bead starts to reappear, and then, “Oh my God, _Ryan_.”

“Feels bigger this way, doesn’t it?” Ryan could really get used to the way Shane says his name like that, through gritted teeth, his voice thick with arousal and catching on the consonants. He’s heard Shane say his name so many times, in so many inflections, and this is the unqualified best of all of them.

“I _can’t_ —”

“Of course you can, you did it already.  Bear down. I’ve got you.”

Ryan gets him open again almost to the full diameter of the bead, making sure not to slow the movement of his hand on Shane’s dick, and then he leans in and _licks_ around the bead where the skin is stretched and sensitive.

Shane cries out, a loud wordless exclamation point of a noise, and then he’s coming in hot pulses in Ryan’s hand and all over the sheets and catching them both off-guard. As he comes, Ryan tugs the bead out, and the next one too, and the rest follow as Shane’s body clenches through his orgasm. He licks Shane through the twitching aftershocks, listening with extreme satisfaction as Shane breathes in ragged gasps into the pillow.

“Who even are you?” Shane mutters at least a full minute later, hauling himself back up onto his elbows. “I cannot _believe_ this shit.”

Ryan wipes his hands on the sheets, the come-covered one and the lube-covered one both. The amount of laundry he’s had to do this week has really been untenable, but it’s a small price to pay.

“Good?”

“Hnngh,” Shane contributes, rolling stiffness out of his back muscles, sounding a little sleepy already. And then: “You can fuck me, if you want.”

Ryan does. He _does_ want, almost too much to turn the offer down. It would be so easy to grab a condom; Shane’s ready for him, loose and boneless against the bed, and it wouldn’t take long at all. But that feels like a different conversation, somehow, or that it should at least _be_ a conversation as opposed to a heat-of-the-moment decision.

“Not tonight,” he says, reaching into the boxer-briefs he’s still wearing to stroke himself and hissing at this touch—the first he’s had in a full hour, and he’s been hard the whole time. “I’ll just—can I?”

Shane cranes his neck back to look, and then he’s rolling over and sitting up, wincing a little.

“Hey, hey, no,” he says, yanking down Ryan’s underwear and pulling them both back down to the bed for a very sticky kiss. “Ry, let me.”

The ‘Ry’ is sweet, and sweeter still is the careful way Shane strokes at his belly and hipbones and curls his hand around Ryan’s cock. His hand is enormous around Ryan, and it feels exactly as good as he imagined it would, but also _right_ in a way he could get used to.

It’s like a piece of his life is clicking into place, one he didn’t even know was out of place to begin with.

Ryan ducks his forehead into Shane’s shoulder and lets Shane get him there. It doesn’t take much. He lets himself think again about Shane, flushed and sweating under his hands, shivering under his mouth, and about _you’re nothing like I thought you’d be_ , and then _you can fuck me if you want_.

“Oh shit,” he whispers, and Shane murmurs an encouraging “mmm-hmm” into his ear, and he comes.

*

“I need a shower,” Shane says a few minutes later, finally looking a little more composed. “I need _ten_ showers. I may never be fully clean again.”

Ryan laughs, rolling away. “Yeah, you’ll be finding lube in surprising places for days. Go ahead and use the shower. I’ve gotta change these sheets first, unless you want to sleep in one giant wet spot.”

“Well, when you’re done with that, feel free to, um.” Shane motions in the direction of the bathroom. “Join me. Jeez, why is _this_ weird? After everything.”

Ryan knows what he means. The sex came naturally, but the casual intimacies still feel like a stretch. This is probably why most people date first, and stick foreign objects inside each other later if at all.

“It’s not going to be weird,” he says decisively. “We’re just not going to let it. Get a head start and I’ll catch up with you.”

Ryan changes the sheets, listening to the shower running. He gives Shane a full five minutes to clean up, maybe have himself a nice private freak-out, and then he ducks into the bathroom with a clean towel. Shane’s humming under his breath, something he can’t quite pick out under the noise of the shower and the whir of the fan.

He hops into the shower and comes face-to-chest with Shane, who has lathered up with what must be half a bottle of his shower gel.

“That stuff costs money, you know,” he says, running his hands through the suds on Shane’s upper arms.

“You’ve made a wreck of my body, Ryan, if not my spirit,” Shane says sternly, tipping his head back into the water to wash shampoo out of his hair and almost hitting his head on the shower head in the process. “Everything in this bathroom is mine now.” 

Shane finishes rinsing himself and he reaches out to wiggle Ryan around, orienting him under the water so he can wash. He leans against the wall of the shower, tipping his head back to rest on cool tile.

“You’re a real enigma,” Shane says, eyes closed. “I thought I knew everything there was to know about you, but I was so mistaken. No one has ever been more wrong about a person’s interior life.”

“Well, now you know. So, verdict?”

“On the butt stuff?”

“On any of it.”

“Well, you’re a _much_ better lay than you are a ghost hunter, that’s for sure,” Shane says. “Not to—not to damn with faint praise, or anything.”

Ryan likes friendly shower banter as much as the next guy, but he was also sort of hoping for an honest reaction from Shane, a sense of how he’s feeling, of if he’s comfortable. He doesn’t want to get precious about definitions, about what this is or isn’t, but he would also love some indication of whether he can expect a repeat performance or if this is a mulligan.

“Please give me more than that.”  Ryan closes the distance between them, arms bracketing Shane against the shower wall, taking them back into the realm of intimate with a deliberate full-body-press. “I’m really asking.”

Shane’s breath hitches in his chest at the contact.

“It was—I thought it was pretty obvious how much I liked it. You’re going to have to take me on a grand tour of your freak drawer.”

Ryan beams up at Shane and allows himself to retreat back into the water. He lathers his hair, falling into his comfortable shower routine while Shane watches. He’s shot through with happiness, all of a sudden, and it’s only partly the post-coital endorphins.

He hums the first few bars of “A Whole New World,” to see if Shane notices. 

“Oh no, we’re not doing this,” he says right away. “We are not doing a Disney singalong about _this_.”

“A WHOLE NEW WORLD!” Ryan half-sings, half-bellows into the spray.

“Ryan, no—”

“DON’T YOU DARE CLOSE YOUR EYES!”

“Great acoustics in here, though.”

“A HUNDRED THOUSAND THINGS TO—Come on, hit me with a harmony here, big guy, I know it’s killing you not to.”

Shane just laughs and slides forward to meet him, catching Ryan at the hips, slippery wet skin on skin.

Ryan makes them start again, from the top. Shane doesn’t know the all the words, but Ryan will teach him. For now it’s enough that their voices fit together, like their jokes do, like their bodies do.


End file.
